Those Golden Years
by Amavi
Summary: A tribute to Kratos and Anna, reflecting on how much she changed him in the short time they knew each other... exploring the years though fluff, humor, and sadness. *Spoilers!* of course


/*

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Tales of Symphonia.

This is based on the 1 Sentence Themes from Livejournal. Although sorry, but some of them do have more than one sentence... sometimes I couldn't decide which of two I liked better, and other times I just needed to finish off my thoughts... as you will see this became more of a story than a series of sentences. That's partly why I listed it as a poem.

**mood**: longing  
**music**: Gomennasai by Tatu  
**Fandom**: Tales of Symphonia  
**Pairing**: Kratos Aurion x Anna  
**Theme Set**: Alpha  
**Rating**: T  
**Warning(s)**: spoilers!!1 obviously.  
**A/N**: My first attempt at something like this… it's a tribute to Kratos and Anna, reflecting on how much she changed him in the short time they knew each other.

*/

* * *

**#1 Comfort.**  
He lived for his work and for carrying out his duty, emotions and feelings had long been dead- comfort had been an unneeded accessory in his life until Anna had proved him wrong.

.

**#2 Kiss. **  
There was a wrinkle in time as she pressed her lips against his cheek softly, tenderly, lovingly; nothing in the world moved and he didn't breathe, or blink, or think as he felt her arms around his shoulders, and realized he had never experienced anything quite like her kiss in over four thousand years of living.

.

**#3 Soft.**  
When she slept beside him on the bedding roll sometimes her soft arm would brush his, if only for a brief moment, and that was why Kratos liked camping so much.

.

**#4 Pain.**  
In the past he had suffered far worse injuries and felt very little pain, but once his pride was in the picture it made his blunder with the giant grasshopper seem like a mortal wound.

**.**

**#5 Potatoes.**  
Sometimes when Kratos didn't know what to cook for dinner, he would ask for his companion's input, but even though he could cook almost any dish known to man she would always request something simple, like steak and potatoes.

.

**#6 Rain.**  
Once, Kratos had been woken in the middle of the night during a storm, not because it was pouring, but because Anna wanted to dance in the rain.

**.**

**#7 Chocolate.**  
During his travels Kratos had overheard that women like chocolate, so he procured some on behalf of Anna- he ended up eating it all himself though, because she refused to accept it saying it would give her diarrhea and rashes.

**.**

**#8 Happiness.**  
Kratos felt strange in the days after their kiss, and spent a lot of time trying to pinpoint where the feeling had come from and when it had started, but there seemed to be no beginning and no end; when he told Anna about it, she told him to stop worrying, because he had finally found the emotion called happiness.

**.**

**#9 Telephone.**  
After leaving his post in Welgaia, it took some time to adjust to the freedom of never having to answer a telephone- Yuan was the only person he'd ever known to like talking so much but it made Sylvarant all the more compelling for not having invented them yet.

**.**

**#10 Ears.**  
As the sun went down that evening, Kratos looked over at his new wife and ran his fingers gently through her hair, pausing only to brush the tops of her ears with the back of his hand; he whispered something not intending to be overheard, but she looked up and gave him the brightest, most genuine smile he had ever seen.

**.**

**#11 Name.**  
That poor girl who was known only as A012 had grown up in a civilized village, so he wasn't expecting things to turn out like this: "Give me your name, scoundrel, and I'll give you mine!"

**.**

**#12 Sensual.**  
Last night Anna had been holding a can of whipped cream to go with the pudding he made, but it exploded in her face, and turned into a very… sensual experience.

**.**

**#13 Death.**  
Whenever he spent too long looking up at the starry sky, Anna would always ask him what he was thinking about… but he never felt like he could give her a straight answer, since he didn't know how to tell her that their precious moments together were numbered, and that he was afraid- yes, truly- of what his life would become after her death.

**.**

**#14 Sex.**  
Though the answer didn't really matter, at that moment they were both wondering the same thing, namely "Have you ever done this before? Because you kind of suck."

**.**

**#15 Touch.**  
She was honestly one of the deepest sleeping people he had ever encountered- once, when she slept well into lunchtime, Kratos gathered up several nearby specimens (a rock, a leaf, a feather) and started prodding her with them, asking "Anna, can you feel this?"

**.**

**#16 Weakness.**  
If she said yes, he would be in her debt for as long as she lived, and if she said no… well, he hadn't thought that far yet; he gripped the sorcerer's ring tightly and prayed to Martel that things would work out all right.

**.**

**#17 Tears.**

"I thought you had left for good, I thought you weren't coming back…" Anna was crying and Kratos reached out hesitantly to kiss her eyebrow, knowing fully that she had been right, and that it would never happen again.

**.**

**#18 Speed.**  
They flew high in the air over Sylvarant, Kratos wrapping his arms around her tightly and regretting ever having agreed to this- she was much too excited no matter how he looked at it and she kept saying things like "It's no wonder you prefer wings to walking! Let's do this all the time!" … which made him almost want to drop her. Almost.

**.**

**#19 Wind.**

One of Anna's happiest memories was from just after she had started traveling with Kratos; after a strong gust of wind almost knocked her down, he had stood close to her and looked right into her eyes before brusquely taking off his cape, and thrusting it at her- he may not have realized it, but that was the first time he had touched her chest.

**.**

**#20 Freedom.**

Being freed from captivity was never enough, since it could still be taken away at any time- he saw that she was still worried, and he wanted her to understand that true freedom would only come from living with her choices, and following them through with strength from within.

**.**

**#21 Life.**  
Time he had spent with Cruxis was no longer something he was proud of, for that life he had been leading had been pointless and empty- he saw it now that Anna had enlightened him, and he realized that some of life's best lessons can only be learned from someone who doesn't realize they are teaching.

**.**

**#22 Jealousy.**  
In the mornings, Anna always had a habit of saying good morning to Noishe first, and then to her husband- he would never tell anyone this, but there were days when he swore she did it on purpose, just to make him jealous.

**.**

**#23 Hands.**  
Anna reached out hesitantly toward a sleeping Kratos, and cautiously took his hand in her own, playing with his fingers and comparing the sizes of their hands.

**.**

**#24 Taste.**  
Sophisticated questions were not Anna's forte- after having the experience of kissing deeply the first words she said were, "So Kratos, what does my tongue taste like?"

**.**

**#25. Devotion.**

"Just so you know, Anna, I-" he looked down at her sleeping face, so peaceful and lovely, "Anna, I will never leave your side again."

**.**

**#26 Forever.**

Love had once been just a word, but now he stood next to this woman and knew that even if he could not define the word anymore, he could feel it, and would cherish it for the rest of his life... though he couldn't know how long that would be.

"'Beyond the clouds and beyond words, beyond my lifetime and beyond reason, I love you-' tell her something like that, girls always go for that kind of stuff!" --Yuan

**.**

**#27 Blood.**  
His hands worked quickly but trembled as he gripped his sword, and his lips stumbled over the words as he tried to cast first aid on Anna- this wasn't the first time she had managed to hurt herself, but each time she did he hoped it would be the last.

**.**

**#28 Sickness.**  
Every time Anna suddenly shuffled away to vomit and returned cussing under her breath, Kratos had to tell himself that she was happier now than she had been at the ranch; instead of suffering from parasitism and malnutrition she was... well, she was pregnant and though he would feed her anything she wanted she was so picky lately… at least she wasn't stuck lying in bed all day with no work to do.

**.**

**#29 Melody.**  
For some reason, whenever Anna did laundry by the river she would hum the same melody to herself- when Kratos asked her about it one day, she blushed and he could have sworn she said, "Gnome away!"

**.**

**#30. Star.**  
Sleepily, Anna leaned against his shoulder and tried to understand what it was about the night sky that made Kratos so pensive; she scooted closer to him and tried to catch his attention, but his eyes were always focused on some faraway star.

**.**

**#31 Home.**  
Passing towns on their travels always seemed to put Anna in a depressed mood, but Kratos was surprised when she told him of her dream to live in a house someday- he tried to tell her that a home was made from the people who lived in it, and that the building itself meant nothing, but she didn't fall for it.

"You don't need a house to have a family, Anna. Our home travels with us wherever we go."

**.**

**#32 Confusion.**  
The night Anna gave birth to his son, or should we say early morning, Kratos wasn't sure if his wife still wanted him, considering he was leaving the infirmary with much-abused ears and a broken hand.

**.**

**#33 Fear.**  
Clumsiness came naturally to Anna, but even so, he hadn't expected her to drop their son on his first day out of the midwife's house; Kratos had yelled at her without meaning to, and he sincerely hoped that little Lloyd would not inherit these traits from his parents.

**.**

**#34 Lightning/Thunder.**  
A bolt of lightning struck the earth, and the infant Lloyd stared up in wonder- Kratos and Anna didn't know what to make of their son, but they were slightly worried that he was deaf, since he didn't even flinch at the sound of thunder.

**.**

**#35 Bonds.**  
Marriage had seemed like such a daunting step at first, but he knew how much it would mean to her and that there were certain advantages to being official, too.

**.**

**#36 Market.**  
Since they rarely spent time in cities, Kratos told Anna that while they were in the marketplace she could have any one thing she wanted- he knew she had odd taste, but he wasn't expecting her to choose such an expensive hair ribbon.

**.**

**#37 Technology.**  
Often when he and Anna were in the woods, she would become bored and start telling jokes, making faces, playing word games, or singing nursery rhymes at the top of her lungs (though Kratos always dreaded that one) and he realized that although he had been living without magitechnology for a few years now, he had never once a found need for it when he was in her company.

**.**

**#38 Gift.**  
While his wife was busy tucking Lloyd in that night, he carefully tucked their new family portrait into a locket he had bought for her, yet somehow he still couldn't decide whether to give it to her now, or wait a few more days until their six year anniversary of escaping from the ranch.

**.**

**#39 Smile.**  
Kratos had promised that the day Lloyd learned how to walk he would let him hold Flamberge, his sword, but he hadn't expected his son to learn so quickly- when Lloyd walked over to him after dinner that same day and gurgled happily, he found he couldn't break his word so the two of them went on an excursion to the little men's room, where he carefully surrendered the hilt of his sword; in that moment Kratos had forgotten that his son was only three, and when the older man returned to the campfire with a small gash on his arm he tried to make light of it by telling his wife, "I had another run-in with a grasshopper, honey."

**.**

**#40 Innocence.**  
One of the best things about having a child was reading him bedtime stories- Kratos would sit with his son in his lap and lean his back against a tree while Anna sat by the fire and listened too, watching the boys until they read themselves to sleep.

**.**

**#41 Completion.**  
Looking around as he traveled Sylvarant's countryside, there seemed to be nothing he had not achieved, and no place he had not yet been; with Anna's hand in his and Lloyd on his shoulders, he asked himself once again what more there could be in a life- though he wondered if even with a hundred more lifetimes he would ever truly know the answer.

**.**

**#42 Clouds.**  
Giggling happily as his parents joined him outstretched in the grass, Lloyd pointed to a cloud directly above his head and babbled away in a language nobody could understand.

**.**

**#43 Sky.**  
Enemies were lurking in the shadows; Kratos smelled them in their sweat and armor and knew he was being watched, so he kept his sword drawn and moved with his family into a deeper part of the forest, where the branches above would finally mask out the sky.

**.**

**#44 Heaven.**  
Wings and angels meant nothing to the mercenary as he was one himself, but Anna still believed firmly in heaven and though he felt she was a bit misguided, he recognized that he had no way to prove her wrong, since being alive would preclude all knowledge of what lies beyond death.

**.**

**#45 Hell. **  
Waking up to the sound of tears, watching the fear in Anna's eyes and the way she held her son as if they might not see the morrow… this must be the meaning of punishment, thought Kratos: living with the knowledge that all of this was his own fault, and knowing that because of his own selfishness there was now a young woman and child living as fugitives, following him out of a foolishness better known as that irrational human feeling called love.

**.**

**#46 Sun.**  
Rays of sparking golden light danced upon on Anna's smiling face, her arms wrapped lightly around their two-year-old son, who was trying to say hello to his reflection in the gently rippling water.

**.**

**#47 Moon.**  
Pointing to the sky with one hand, Kratos lay with his family curled around him, patting Noishe on the head with his other and trying to explain everything he knew about the stars; he knew they would not understand and that his words meant very little, but he felt that since they were listening, even just saying the words had a significance.

**.**

**#48 Waves.**  
Beaches were never fun for Kratos, but he decided that it was time his son saw the open sea- he took Anna and Lloyd to the edge of the continent by cover of the night, where they gasped in wonder at the shore and stepped forward into the wake of the waves, to feel the water wash over their tired and dusty feet.

**.**

**#49 Hair. **  
The direction of the wind had changed unexpectedly, and Kratos watched as Anna's long hair blew suddenly with a gust towards the south; he felt uneasy and asked her to come closer, but saw the worried expression on her face and drew her into a long, passionate kiss.

**.**

**#50 Supernova.**

It was over so suddenly, so silently; everything he had built and loved and cherished in his life had fallen away, encased in a white which burned his eyes, and everything had crumbed from underneath his blood-soaked hands into the darkness- his heart had fallen with them, died with them- he hurt so much that he could not feel, or breathe, and he could not even offer a tear to interrupt the ringing silence which pounded against his ears.

Lloyd and Anna, they were gone.

.

.

.

* * *

**A/N:** Please, if you liked this or have any thoughts on whether this was in-character... R&R!

(Critiques are okay! I am trying to improve my grasp of their personalities... especially Kratos ^_^;)


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